Aliens: Colonial Marines

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Aliens: Colonial Marines
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the biggest mistake that Sega and Gearbox have ever done that led to them being sued over the two being false advertisers.
Genre(s): First-Person Shooter
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
PlayStation 3
Xbox 360
Release Date: February 12, 2013
Engine: Unreal Engine 3
Developer(s): Gearbox Software
TimeGate Studios
Demiurge Studios
Nerve Software
Publisher(s): Sega
Country: United States
Series: Alien
Predecessor: Alien 3 (timeline)
Successor: Alien Resurrection (timeline)
Alien: Isolation (video game)

"You f*cked it up!"

— Angry Joe's First word

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a 2013 first-person shooter game developed by Gearbox Software[1] and published by Sega for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The game is set in the Alien universe, in terms of the timeline it is just after Alien 3, though it mostly focuses on the aftermath of the events seen in Aliens. The game was also supposed to be released for the Wii U, which was to be developed by Demiurge Studios, but was canceled for unknown reasons.[2]

Gameplay

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a first-person shooter based on the Alien science fiction horror film series. The game's campaign mode, which can be played by a single player or cooperatively by up to four players, features 11 missions that involve players moving from one checkpoint to another while fighting opponents controlled by the game's artificial intelligence. Opponents consist of either Alien creatures, also known as Xenomorphs, or hostile human mercenaries. Xenomorphs are fast and primarily attack with their claws or by spitting acid, while mercenaries are slower and use firearms.

As the fictional Colonial Marines military unit depicted in James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens, players have access to weapons such as pistols, shotguns, grenades, pulse rifles, flamethrowers, robotic sentry turrets, and smartguns, which automatically track and target opponents. They may also use welding torches to seal doors and motion trackers to detect unseen enemies. Ammunition can be found on defeated mercenaries or from certain locations in the mission area. The Colonial Marines are protected by a health bar that is divided into segments. If a segment is partially depleted, it will automatically regenerate over time. Med-Packs throughout the missions may be acquired to restore lost health segments. Players may also collect pieces of armor that protect the health bar with a secondary meter that does not automatically regenerate. Players have a limited time to revive a player whose health has been fully depleted. If they fail to do so, the downed player cannot return to the game until the surviving players reach the next checkpoint.

In addition to the campaign mode, Colonial Marines features a competitive multiplayer mode where two teams of up to five players face each other in four different scenarios. Each scenario involves one team playing as Colonial Marines and the other as Aliens. After a time limit has been reached, players switch roles and play once more on the same map. Scenarios include Team Deathmatch, where both teams must kill as many opposing players as possible; Extermination, where Colonial Marines must detonate bombs in egg-infested areas protected by Aliens; Escape, which involves Colonial Marines completing objectives to reach a destination while being assaulted by Aliens; and Survivor, where Colonial Marines must survive attacks from Aliens with limited health and ammunition resources for as long as possible. Unlike Colonial Marines, Alien players play from a third-person perspective and cannot use firearms, but have the ability to climb walls, run on ceilings, deliver attacks with their claws, and unleash streams of acid.

Players earn experience points by overcoming opponents, completing challenges, and finding collectibles—Audio Logs, Dog Tags, and Legendary Weapons, all of which are related to characters who appear in the film series. Challenges range from killing opponents in a particular way to winning multiplayer matches and completing campaign missions under a difficulty setting. Players have two ranks, one for their Colonial Marine character and another for their Alien character. When a sufficient amount of experience has been obtained, their characters rank up. Colonial Marine ranks unlock weapon upgrades for use in both the campaign and the competitive multiplayer modes. These include alternate fire attachments, telescopic sights, and larger capacity magazines. In contrast, Alien ranks unlock new combat abilities for Alien characters. Completing challenges also unlocks appearance options for both Colonial Marine and Alien characters, and new attributes that are exclusive to Colonial Marines in the competitive multiplayer mode.

Plot

17 weeks after the events of Aliens, the Sephora spaceship sends a full battalion of Colonial Marines to investigate the Sulaco spaceship, now in orbit around the LV-426 moon. A massive Xenomorph infestation is discovered inside the Sulaco and several Marines are killed in the initial onslaught. Corporal Christopher Winter, private Peter O'Neal, and private Bella Clarison discover that hostile mercenaries working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation are in command of the Sulaco and have been breeding Xenomorphs on board for study. Shortly before both ships are destroyed in the ensuing confrontation, the Marines, along with commander Captain Cruz, Sephora android Bishop, and pilot lieutenant Lisa Reid, escape aboard her dropship and take shelter in the ruins of the Hadley's Hope colony complex on LV-426.

Although the Marines learn that Clarison has been attacked by a facehugger and needs medical treatment, Cruz orders Winter to travel to a nearby Weyland-Yutani research facility set up near a derelict Xenomorph spacecraft and recover a manifest that identifies an unknown prisoner from the Sulaco. In an attempt at saving Clarison, Winter and O'Neal accept the mission and escort her to the facility, where they intend to convince surviving personnel to remove the Xenomorph embryo from her body. However, upon arrival, an interrogated Weyland-Yutani medical officer explains to them that Clarison's life cannot be saved because the creature's invasive placenta is cancerous and will eventually kill her even if the embryo is successfully extracted. Clarison dies when a chestburster hatches from her.

Winter and O'Neal recover the manifest they were sent to find and rescue the prisoner, who is revealed to be corporal Dwayne Hicks. Hicks explains that Weyland-Yutani intercepted and boarded the Sulaco prior to its arrival at the Fiorina 161 planet. A fire in the hypersleep bay subsequently caused the Sulaco survivors Ellen Ripley, Newt, and Bishop to be jettisoned from the ship, along with the body of an unidentified man who was mistaken for the corporal. Hicks himself was captured by Weyland-Yutani personnel and subjected to torture during interrogation, overseen by android Michael Weyland in an attempt to learn more about the Xenomorphs' origins and to gain control of the Sulaco's weapon systems. From Hicks, the Marines also learn that an FTL-capable ship is docked at the research facility, representing the last chance for the Marines to escape from the moon.

After gathering the remaining Sephora personnel on the colony, Cruz orders an all-out assault on the Weyland-Yutani complex in the hopes of capturing the FTL vessel. Winter and Hicks spearhead the advance, but the ship leaves shortly before they can reach it. In a last desperate attempt, Cruz pilots a dropship up to the escaping vessel and crashes into its hangar. Winter is confronted by a Xenomorph queen in the hangar bay, and attempts to eject her using a cargo launching system, but fails when she climbs back aboard. Cruz sacrifices himself when he launches the crippled dropship directly into the queen, propelling both out of the vessel. Winter, O'Neal, Reid, Bishop, and Hicks confront Weyland, who is ultimately executed by Hicks. In search of useful intelligence, Bishop connects to the destroyed android and states that he has "everything".

Development

Design

Colonial Marines was conceived by Gearbox Software after an encounter between the company's creative director, Bryan Martell, and the director of the original Alien film, Ridley Scott. When Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 was released in 2005, Gearbox was interested in working with an existing intellectual property and had previously considered Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner and Michael Mann's 1995 film Heat as candidates. Martell's discussion with Scott on the Alien universe inspired him to approach 20th Century Fox about the licensing opportunities. Sega, who bought the rights to publish games based on the franchise in December 2006, gave Gearbox complete freedom to present them with an idea for a game. Because Gearbox had experience with first-person shooters and the development team was composed of people who were fans of Aliens, the company proposed a first-person shooter that would be a direct sequel to it.

Although the final script for the game was written by Gearbox writer Mikey Neumann, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, writers of the 2004 television series Battlestar Galactica, collaborated with Gearbox during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike to develop the story and characters. The game takes place shortly after the 1992 Aliens sequel Alien 3, but addresses the events that lead to it. As a result, Colonial Marines is considered part of the series' canon. Several locations of Aliens like the Sulaco spaceship and the Hadley's Hope colony were recreated for the game. To keep the same level of authenticity, concept artist Syd Mead, who collaborated with Cameron on the film to design the Sulaco, was hired to recreate its "mechanical mood" and design areas of the spaceship that did not appear in the film but would be used in the game. The development team also contacted Kodak to get color channel details about the film's film stock.

Originally, Colonial Marines was intended to feature squad-based gameplay, allowing the player to issue orders to Colonial Marines controlled by the game's artificial intelligence using context-sensitive commands. These would include hacking doors, sealing air vents, and setting up sentry turrets. In cooperative mode, players would then be able to directly control these Marines, who would have their own strengths and weaknesses. However, this idea was ultimately dropped to make the gameplay more accessible. Gearbox chose to develop the game for Windows and the then recently released PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, stating that their technology would "do [the film] justice."

Production

Although Gearbox is credited as the primary developer of Colonial Marines, multiple development studios contributed to the game's production. Initial work on Colonial Marines, internally codenamed Pecan, began in 2007 with the creation of a prototype by Demiurge Studios, who also helped Gearbox with the networking and multiplayer aspects. Between 2007 and 2010, Gearbox did not focus on the development of the game, instead preferring to work on other projects like Borderlands and Duke Nukem Forever, a game that took over a decade to develop. The game was built using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3, but Gearbox spent a considerable amount of preproduction time developing a custom real-time lighting and shadow renderer that is "plugged" into the engine to capture the feel of Aliens. Nerve Software, a company that handled the multiplayer of the 2001 first-person shooter Return to Castle Wolfenstein, built multiplayer maps for the game.

When Borderlands was released in 2009, the game turned out to be a critical and commercial success. This led Gearbox to immediately start work on a sequel, Borderlands 2, and outsource primary development on Colonial Marines to TimeGate Studios, who was developing Section 8: Prejudice at the time. In late 2010, when TimeGate started to focus their work on Colonial Marines, the company realized that very little progress had been made to the game. According to one source, the game was simply a collection of unrelated assets that included a lighting and shadow renderer. Although TimeGate handled primary development on the game until Borderlands 2 was almost complete in mid-2012, their work had to constantly be approved by both Gearbox and Sega. Because narrative designers were still writing the script of the campaign mode, entire scenes and missions were discarded due to story changes. One of these involved the player escorting a scientist who would be a secret agent working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation.

To further complicate the situation, there were disagreements on how the game should be designed; Sega wanted Colonial Marines to be more similar to a Call of Duty game, with fewer Aliens and more Marines to shoot at, a view Gearbox and TimeGate disagreed with. Developers also struggled to optimize the game after spending a significant amount of time increasing its graphical fidelity for a press demo, which ran on high-end computers not normally meant for general use. The game's shader and particle fidelity were then decreased significantly before release, and textures had to be reduced in size to fit into the memory restraints of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

When Gearbox took the project back in mid-2012, the company was not satisfied with TimeGate's work, partially because the game could not run on the PlayStation 3. With a release date set for February 2013, asking Sega for an extension was not an option because the game had already been delayed several times. This resulted in Gearbox only having nine months to revise TimeGate's work and finish the game. How much of the game was actually made by Gearbox was highly questioned by TimeGate. According to Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, TimeGate "contributed 20-25 percent of the game's overall development time." However, without considering Gearbox's preproduction time, Pitchford said that TimeGate's effort was equivalent to theirs. A moderator on the official TimeGate forum revealed that the studio worked on the weapons, characters, Aliens, story, and multiplayer component, while some TimeGate developers estimated that 50 percent of the campaign mode in the released game was made by them.

Several actors from the films were involved in the game. Michael Biehn reprised his role as corporal Dwayne Hicks, while Lance Henriksen voiced the androids Bishop and Michael Weyland. Henriksen remarked that it was interesting for him to voice a character that he had not touched in more than 25 years. In contrast, Biehn commented negatively on his experience in voicing his character, stating that there was a lack of passion from the people who were in charge of the project. The soundtrack was composed by Kevin Riepl, who is best known for his work on numerous independent films and the Gears of War series. Because the story of the game is canonical, Riepl's score was heavily influenced by Jerry Goldsmith's work on Alien and James Horner's work on Aliens. The soundtrack was recorded at Ocean Way in Nashville, Tennessee.

Marketing and Release

A first-person shooter based on the Alien universe was confirmed to be in pre-production shortly after Sega acquired the license in December 2006. Colonial Marines was officially announced by Game Informer in its March 2008 issue, where its premise and intended gameplay features were revealed. Although the game shares the same title as a canceled 2002 PlayStation 2 project by Electronic Arts and Fox Interactive that would feature a similar setting and subject matter, the game is completely unrelated to it. Originally intended to be released in 2009, Colonial Marines was delayed after Gearbox laid off several employees in November 2008. This led some to question whether the game had been canceled or not. In the following years, few other announcements were made, although Gearbox did show some screenshots at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo.

At the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, after confirming that Colonial Marines would be released in spring 2012, Gearbox unveiled a teaser trailer and revealed that a Wii U version was in development. A live gameplay demo played by a Gearbox representative was also showcased at the event. In January 2012, Sega announced that the game had been delayed to a fall 2012 release, stating that the company did not want to "sacrifice the creative process just for the sake of following a [deadline]." In May 2012, the game was delayed one last time, with Gearbox stating that Colonial Marines would launch for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 on February 12, 2013, while the Wii U version would follow later. In the months leading up to the game's release, more trailers and demos were released.

Prior to its release, Colonial Marines was criticized for not featuring any playable female character. When a petition was formed to change this, Gearbox included them in both the cooperative and multiplayer modes. In addition to the standard edition of the game, a collector's edition was made available for purchase. The collector's edition included a Powerloader figurine inspired by the film, a Colonial Marines dossier, character customization options, exclusive multiplayer weapons, and a firing range game level. Players who pre-ordered the game could also receive some of the collector's edition content as a bonus. Shortly after the game's release, Gearbox released a patch that fixed numerous campaign and multiplayer bugs and offered various visual improvements. The Wii U version, which was being handled by Demiurge, was canceled in April 2013.

Downloadable content

Colonial Marines supports additional in-game content in the form of downloadable content packs. Between March and July 2013, four downloadable content packs were released for the game. A season pass to these packs could be purchased before the game was released. The first pack, Bug Hunt, was released on March 19, 2013, and adds a new cooperative mode that involves up to four players fighting increasingly larger waves of Xenomorphs and hostile soldiers across three new maps. Players earn in-game money by killing opponents, which can then be spent on different options like buying ammunition or opening up new areas of the map to increase their chances of survival. The second pack, Reconnaissance Pack, was released on May 7, 2013, and extends the game's competitive multiplayer mode with four maps and more customization options for Xenomorph characters, while the third pack, Movie Map Pack, was released on June 11, 2013, and adds four maps set in locations from the first three Alien films.

The fourth and final pack, Stasis Interrupted, was released on July 23, 2013, and adds a new campaign mode that takes place before the campaign of the base game, exploring what happened to Hicks between Aliens and Alien 3. The campaign features four "interlocking" missions where players must play as three different characters. Stasis Interrupted also adds several new achievements for players to unlock, which were initially leaked via a list of PlayStation 3 Trophies. According to a report, both Demiurge and Nerve were in charge of developing the downloadable content packs for the game, but it was not confirmed if they contributed to the development of Stasis Interrupted.

Why It’s Game Over Man Game Over!

  1. This game took 12 years to develop, only a little less than Duke Nukem Forever. As a result, it ended up looking like an unfinished product rushed at release riddled with bugs and glitches and a terrible storyline, despite the overly long development time.
    • Coincidently enough, these two games were developed by Gearbox Software and they developed both games at the same time.
  2. Numerous bugs and glitches, such as missing textures, for example, the infamously untextured black vents which reflect absolutely no light and does not respond to fire. A few of these were later fixed, but many remain even today.
  3. Horrendously programmed AI. Xenomorphs will jump slowly towards you and then get stuck for a half second delay after landing, which causes them to be basically cannon fodder. The worst cases are that of O‘Neal who often blocks your path and the blind Xenomorphs, the latter of which has been mocked mercilessly.
    • In-game dialog informs that the blind Xenomorphs will detect you if you make a loud enough noise, however, they do not react to sound at all, and in fact, the AI for them is completely broken. Bumping them while crouched does not alert them to your presence. Bouncing on a metal object does not make them detect you, a conversation does not make them detect you, and not even someone cutting down a door with a cutting torch, which makes a very loud noise in-game, will alert them to your presence.
    • For some reason, the Xenomorphs only seem to target you. For example, when the Xenomorphs are in combat with the marine AI, and you come near them, they will stop what they're doing immediately, and try to attack you.[3]
    • On October 31, 2017, a modder discovered that the poor AI was caused by a single typo in one of the INI files (AttachPawnToTeather when it should be AttachPawnToTether). This causes enemy AI to not know which "zone" of the level it is in, therefore it won't use any sneaking or flanking maneuvers.
  4. The game is too easy, no matter which difficulty settings you use, due to the broken enemy AI (as mentioned above) and the fact that you have tons of HP. Even the highest difficulty is only harder because it removes the HUD and lets you die because you have no idea how much health you have.
  5. Laser modules for weapons are completely useless, since the laser beam is not offset to indicate the point of impact and instead represents a line drawn straight forward from where the laser actually is on the weapon.
  6. It is too difficult to tell if you are actually hitting the enemy you are targeting. The weapons are extremely inaccurate due to a mechanic discovered by modder TemplarGFX called "Weapon Wandering". It is a simulation of you not being able to hold the gun steady when aiming because of its weight, but in real life, only the weapon wanders, while the shooter's viewpoint remains steady. To compound this bullets don't come out of the gun, but the character. Because of this mechanic, if you're firing at long range and wander by a few pixels, your aim is off by meters!
  7. Very poor level design.
  8. Looking at one of the scripted events they clearly wanted you to look at will cause you to be killed by a rocket due to bad enemy placement.
  9. As mentioned above, both the poor level design and the broken enemy AI means that it is possible to finish a level from start to finish in only 5 minutes.
  10. Awful graphics with inexcusably low-res textures and shadows, plastic looking weapons and action figure like character models, and almost zero lighting detail which would be considered outdated and ugly if the game was released in 2010. These required an absolutely massive 4 GB patch to partially fix. The game also overuses lens flare, which can block sight of enemies and can even get you killed. It's even more disappointing when considering how much appealing the early trailers and screenshots for the game looked (as mentioned below.)
  11. The cutscenes are very ugly to look at and have very jarring voice acting, lip-sync, lots of compression artifacts, and lack of facial animation which makes it seem like a budget game instead of a triple-A game release.
  12. Very crude and poorly implemented multiplayer cooperative mode.
  13. False advertising: The developers put together a short demo that both looked and played much better than the finished game for E3 and promotional material to cover up how botched the game actually was before release. This led to a class action lawsuit being filed against SEGA and Gearbox.
    • There were also many features showcased that ultimately don't exist in the finished game, such as a flamethrower-equipped Power Loader.
  14. Unoriginal and uninspired characters despite Gearbox's claims.
  15. You can only use the M56 Smartgun twice, for about 10 minutes before the end of the level it appears in, and if you're playing this level in the coop mode, only one player can use it at a time. What's worse, you can't bring it with you to the next level.
  16. The fact that there are enemy humans, in the form of Weyland-Yutani mercenaries. What makes this terrible is that they ended up stealing the spotlight from the Xenomorphs (who are officially the icon of the franchise) for a couple of levels. Apparently, their addition was mandated by SEGA, who demanded that the game pander to Call of Duty players.
  17. The story is full of plot holes and things that contradict Aliens: for example, it is never explained how Hicks survived, and the reactor building looks in awfully good shape considering the size of the explosion at the end of the movie. The final DLC Stasis Interrupted was entirely based around trying to explain away this plot hole, taking players on a ludicrous journey where it turns out a fat guy got shoved into Hicks' cryo-pod as part of a trip all the way to where Alien 3 is set, only for Weyland-Yutani to capture Hicks and take him right back to LV-426 to punish him by making him be in Aliens: Colonial Marines.
  18. Terrible and formulaic enemy placements in certain levels. Of the game's 11 levels (including the tutorial), three are focused on the Xenomorphs, another three are focused on the human enemies, and yet another three missions that feature both enemies at the same time.
  19. The final boss fight against the Alien Queen is inexcusably anti-climactic. You just try to get away from her (no pun intended), then push a couple of buttons which will then trigger the ending cutscene.
  20. Poor sound design: In particular, the aliens sound like a bunch of angry cats, and the Pulse Rifle firing sound is taken directly from the films and not looped, meaning that there are frequent pauses where the sound clip stops playing and starts again when firing full-auto.
  21. Bad voice acting: in particular, Michael Biehn sounds horribly bored, more so in the DLC which sounds quite literally phoned in.
  22. It ruined the reputation of Gearbox Software, thanks to Randy Pitchford meddling with the production and the game being released in an unfinished state after 12 years of development resulting in numerous problems, and since it's negative impact on gaming, both Sega and Gearbox Software never worked with each other ever again, and Sega later apologised for the game's failure, so to put this into perspective, most of this was Gearbox's fault, not Sega.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. There are fan mods that exist to make the game more enjoyable and fun to play. The ACM Overhaul mod fixes many (though not all) of the game's fatal problems.
  2. Competitive online multiplayer can be fun, though obviously these days finding people playing it is difficult at best.
  3. The soundtrack composed by Kevin Riepl (who worked on the original Gears of War) is decent and gives off a feeling of the Aliens setting.
  4. Some of the environments look good.

Reception and Legacy

"You fucked it up!/You done fucked it up!"
This game was given a 4/10 by AngryJoe.

Aliens: Colonial Marines received negative reviews from critics and players and became infamous due to its numerous design flaws, poor graphics, glitches, broken AI, and poor gunplay. On Metacritic, the review aggregator website gave the Xbox 360 version of the game a score of 48/100, the PC version a 45/100, and the PS3 version was given a score of 43/100. It is also notorious for the outright false advertising that was used to promote the game. This is the main reason why the "Gameplay not final" words were used for the reveal trailer.

In DXFan619's review of the game, he states that after four to five hours of gameplay, he got a serious case of Déjà vu after he saw a Xenomorph launch on to him and had to fight him off and that the feeling got worse as he continued to play the game. He states that he experiences elements of the game he already played in FEAR 2. He then found that the lead designer for both games was John Mulkey which then caused them to realize both games have the same final boss fight, and the two games were basically the same game. In his Worst Games of the Decade video, he deemed it the worst licensed game.

Angry Joe gave this game a 4/10 and listing as #3 of the Worst Game of 2013.

Despite its commercial success, it took the throne from Alien Resurrection as the lowest point in the entire franchise, and it also permanently damaged Randy Pitchford's reputation from then on out. Because of this, Alien: Isolation was made by Creative Assembly a year later in order to fix everything this mess has done, but despite being superior, Colonial Marines' loss of goodwill from fans and its controversy caused Isolation to be lowest selling game of 2014, resulting in Sega losing the game rights from 20th Century Fox and Disney.

Sales

In the United Kingdom, Colonial Marines topped the all formats charts in its first week of release. On both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 individual charts, the game also reached the top position. According to GfK Chart-Track, it was the biggest release of the year in the United Kingdom and held the second highest first-week sales for an Alien game since Sega's 2010 title Aliens vs. Predator. In the United States, Colonial Marines reached No. 6 on the all formats charts for February 2013. As of March 31, 2013, as stated in Sega's end-of-fiscal-year report, Colonial Marines had sold 1.31 million units in the United States and Europe.

Controversy and lawsuit

Upon release, Colonial Marines drew a significant controversy. According to a report, Gearbox had been moving people and resources off Colonial Marines onto Borderlands and Duke Nukem Forever while still collecting full payments from Sega as if they were working on the game. When Sega discovered this misconduct, they temporarily canceled Colonial Marines, leading to the round of layoffs at Gearbox in late 2008. Gearbox outsourced a significant portion of the development to other developers to compensate for their mismanagement. While Sega initially denied such outsourcing, sources claimed otherwise, suggesting that the game was rushed through redesigns, certification, and shipping, despite being largely unfinished. The game drew additional controversy when sequences from press demos were compared to the same sequences in the final game, revealing that the finished game is significantly lower in graphical quality.

In April 2013, two players filed a lawsuit, claiming that Gearbox and Sega had falsely advertised the game by showing demos at trade shows that did not resemble the final product. The demos, described as "actual gameplay" by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, were said to feature graphical fidelity, artificial intelligence, and levels not featured in the game. Although Sega suggested settling the lawsuit on their part and agreed to pay US$1.25 million, they denied any illegal behavior. However, Gearbox filed a request to have claims against them dropped, stating that the company, as a software developer, did not have responsibility for marketing decisions. Gearbox officials added that the company supplemented Sega's development budget with its own money to help Sega finish the game and that they had not received any royalty from its sales. The lawsuit lost class-action status and Gearbox was dropped from the case in May 2015. Pitchford said that he lost between US$10 and US$15 million of his own money on Colonial Marines and refuted the accusations against the studio. In 2017, a modder discovered a small typographical error in the game's code, fixing this error notably improved the artificial intelligence of enemies.

Trivia

  • The game was planned to be released in Japan, but it was canceled for unknown reasons, probably due to the negative reception.[4]
  • In Mission 6: For Bella, the player enters a large building and has to run past a room with a sentry gun on the left hand side. One of the lockers inside that room contains 3 small balls, one red, one blue and one textured like the ground you run on in the Chaos Emerald Stage from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles.
  • People who pre-ordered Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse got a level based off of Aliens: Colonial Marines.

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References

  1. ↑ Additional work by TimeGate Studios, Demiurge Studios, and Nerve Software.
  2. ↑ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/wii-u/632945-aliens-colonial-marines/data
  3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBHkricvocs
  4. ↑ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps3/937326-aliens-colonial-marines/data

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